Joseph Wong The best founders I know share one habit that most people overlook. They stop. Once a week, for 20 minutes, they sit with what happened, what they did, and what it means. Not a fancy system. Not a 3-hour journaling ritual. Just 20 minutes of honest reflection before the next week begins. I started doing … Read more
The most expensive hiring mistake a founder can make is hiring a Head of Sales too early or hiring the wrong one. I’ve seen it happen at every stage. A Series A founder finally has the budget to bring on a sales leader, hires someone impressive from a large company, and watches them fail within … Read more
I had 400 unread emails when I finally broke. It was a Tuesday morning. I opened my inbox, saw the number, and closed my laptop. Not because I didn’t care. Because I didn’t know where to start. Every email felt equally urgent and equally unimportant at the same time. That afternoon I built a system … Read more
Most performance review systems fail before anyone fills them in. They’re too long. Too generic. Too disconnected from how people actually work. They ask employees to rate themselves on “communication” and “teamwork” using a 1-5 scale that means nothing because nobody defined what a 3 looks like. I’ve seen this at every stage of startup. … Read more
Most Series A companies make the same mistake with their first VP of People hire. They wait until something breaks — a bad hire that costs six months, a culture problem that surfaces in an all-hands, a departing engineer who cites “poor management” in their exit interview. Then they panic-hire a People leader and expect … Read more
I’m going to skip the generic advice. You’ve read “fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” You’ve read “talk to your customers.” You’ve read “hire slow, fire fast.” Everyone says these things. They’re true and they’re useless because they don’t tell you what they actually mean until after you’ve learned them the hard … Read more
I burned out at month 14. Not the dramatic kind you read about — the founder who has a breakdown at a board meeting or disappears for a month. The quiet kind. The kind where you’re still showing up, still doing the work, but every decision feels like it costs twice what it used to. … Read more
Six months ago I couldn’t have told you what an API was. Today I have three AI-powered features running in my product. I built all of them without writing code. My co-founder — who is technical — has reviewed all of them and told me they’re production-ready. This is not a story about being a … Read more
The most expensive mistake in startups isn’t a bad hire or a missed fundraise. It’s building something nobody wants. I’ve done it. Most founders have. You spend 4 months building, launch to silence, and spend the next 2 months rationalising why the market isn’t ready yet. The market was ready. Your idea just wasn’t right. … Read more
I’ve made three genuinely bad hires. Not “didn’t work out” bad — properly bad. The kind where you spend 3 months managing a situation that should never have existed. Each one was different. Each one was avoidable. And looking back, each one had red flags I either didn’t see or chose to ignore. Here’s what … Read more